45th ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL - Behind 'Letter from Al'.

Here's how it happened: In early 1993, around the time of Bill Clinton's first inauguration (How young we all seemed! Lying under oath was still a crime! Cell phones were the size of bricks!), I went to Washington to visit a friend. In the corridors of the Mayflower Hotel, during NR's "Conservative Summit," I met John O'Sullivan, then impresario of the magazine. A few months earlier, a mutual friend had suggested we meet, and had volunteered me to write a few articles for NR. As John airily sauntered along the hallway, greeting what would turn out to be the cast and crew of the lurid, over-the-top B-movie called the Clinton Era ("Hi, Newt!" "Hi, Henry!"), he pitched to me an idea.

"Something like-Hi, Taki-the 'Dear Bill' letters from Private Eye," he said. I had no idea what he meant. He shrugged. "You write a letter as Al Gore, or, if you prefer, it can be someone slightly more-Hi, Larry-slightly more consequential, sort of summing up the past two weeks-Hello, Judge-from an insider's perspective." "But I'm an outsider," I said. O'Sullivan just smiled. "Then it will be all the easier, dear boy, to make it funny. Hello, Mr. Ambassador . . . "

All that was left was to create a recipient of the letters (we settled on "Rusty," an environmentalist researcher working in the rain forest), teach me how to use e-mail (remember, this was a long, long time ago), and that, for the next seven years, was that.

At first, it was an easy formula: take the political news of the day, distort it slightly, add a little color, some innuendo, type it up, send it off, do it again. The first dozen or two were longish, plot-heavy letters to Rusty. Occasionally, though, I have spiced up the format to include telephone transcripts, e-mails, fundraising letters, and my favorite, psychiatrist's notes. It was fun. But then, like a runaway train, the whole thing started to lurch and screech and emit an appalling smell. Soon I was sitting up into the wee hours, sifting through clips of health-care plans and travel-office firings and Justice Department indictments and bimbo eruptions and cigars and blue dresses and Senate campaigns and Florida recounts, and it was impossible-impossible!-not to take it all personally, as if the entire comic circus of the Clinton-Gore years were designed to prove me inadequate. Because try as I might, I simply could not improve on the news of the day. I could not satirize a farce. Making fun of Al Gore is a little like pouring melted butter on ice cream-I mean, I guess you can do it, but why? No comic writer, no matter how gifted-no Twain, no Swift-could create a more delusional, imbalanced, self-absorbed comic villain than our sitting vice president. It's been hell, let me tell you.

The other week, the vice president stood in front of more American flags than I have ever seen in any place other than a used-car lot on Fourth of July weekend, and spoke to the nation in that tilty, lispy, middle-school-principal voice of his, and my spirit broke. I concede, Mr. Vice President. After eight years, I'm throwing in the towel. I can do many things, sir, but I cannot mock a clown.